Claims her castle
take their inspiration from Gertrude Jekyll’s walled garden and the use of moss, alpine plants and Bonsai trees will reflect the idea of life returning to the castle.
Anya will also swaddle the interior of the castle in blankets, suggesting both a house shut up and protected for winter and the transition the building has experienced during the conservation project, which has been carried out with support from the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport, the Wolfson Foundation, the Path Trust and donations from supporters, to manage the effects of sea, wind and rain that come its location on top of a high crag.
Anya says: “Lindisfarne is a very special place. It’s a place I have always been really intrigued by. It’s an amazing opportunity.
“How often do you get free rein of a castle? The opportunity to inhabit it briefly is not one to turn down.”
Lindisfarne Castle’s general manager, Simon Lee, says, “Anya is an incredibly exciting artist and to see her work presented in the context of Lindisfarne Castle will be very special. We had a once-in-a-generation opportunity while the castle is empty to do something different here.
“We hope Anya’s work will not only inspire people to experience this special place in a new way, it will also showcase the Northumberland coast as an inspiration for people across the world.”
Between April 1 and the exhibition’s opening, visitors to the castle will have the chance to look more closely at the structure of the building and see and hear about some of the discoveries made during the restoration project.
The artwork installation is a collaboration between the National Trust and Locus+, a Newcastlebased visual arts commissioning agency. It is being delivered by the National Trust through Trust New Art and supported by Arts Council England and a donation from the Henry Moore Foundation.
Locus+ was established in 1993 and has since built up an international reputation of working with artists from all over the world, at different stages of their careers.
Locus+ has commissioned two previous projects with Anya and published her first book, Anya Gallaccio Chasing Rainbows.
Her Two Sisters project was a six-metre high, 70-tonne column of chalk bonded by plaster installed on the silt bed of the Minerva Basin, Hull. The work was continually modified by the tidal flow of the River Humber until it finally eroded and collapsed.
Repens was a project at Compton Verney mansion and grounds in Warwickshire, which fully opened to the public as a major art gallery in 2004 in parkland designed by Northumberland’s Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.
Anya used a design by 18th Century architect Robert Adam for the ceiling at Compton Verney, which was never implemented, and mowed grass to replicate it at four locations in the parkland.
Locus+ director Jonty Tarbuck says: “Lindisfarne Castle is an amazing place, with its history and its position and it being empty is an incredible window of opportunity. It’s the chance of a lifetime and it is an incredibly exciting project.”